Energy transition

The package includes initiatives in multiple sectors, including plans to increase the uptake of greener fuels in the maritime sector, boost renewable energy, promote more sustainable and less emitting transport, revise energy taxation, and support the most affected citizens and businesses.
Several strategies of relevance to maritime transport will contribute towards reaching these significant goals. These include The FuelEU Maritime initiative, which intends to boost the use of environmentally friendly alternative fuels in ships and within European ports. In maritime transportation, the plan accommodates all renewable and low-carbon fuels such as; liquid biofuels, e-liquids, decarbonised gas (including bio-LNG and e-gas), hydrogen and hydrogen-derived fuels (including methanol and ammonia), as well as electricity.

The EU fishing fleet consumed 1.9 billion litres of fuel to land 5 million tonnes of fish valued at 5.8 billion at the first sale in 2020. This fuel consumption leads to the emission of roughly 5.2 million tonnes of CO2. Between 2009 and 2020, fuel consumption and CO2 emissions decreased by 18%, while fish landings in weight decreased by 6%, despite increasing by 2% in value.

The EU fleet has become more fuel efficient over the years but has shown less efficiency in recent years, mainly due to rising fuel prices. Fuel efficiency is essentially  a result of fuel prices. Fuel price increases lead to higher fuel costs, worsening efficiency. The lower the percentage, the more fuel efficient the vessel (i.e., less income is used to cover fuel costs). Fuel costs as a proportion of income were estimated at 13% in 2020, reaching the 2016 level, the lowest historical level, and worsened after 2021.

The CO2 emissions per kg of fish show a decreasing trend over time, a 13% decrease between 2009 and 2020. This could be partly explained by the better status of some key fish stocks as well as the aim of the sector to reduce fuel consumption. The estimated increase for 2021 and 2022 should be taken with caution since these are based on forecasts. In 2020, the EU fishing fleet directly emitted 1.27 kg of CO2 to land a kg of fish. These emissions vary significantly by fishing method and species targeted, with pelagic trawling to catch small pelagics having the lowest emissions. Typically, seafood has, on average, a lower carbon footprint than animal production on land.

It has been recently estimated that globally on average, 3.7 kg CO2 eq. are emitted per kg of edible fish when accounting for the whole life cycle (including distribution, processing and commercialisation). This study confirms that small pelagics have the lowest emissions, which are lower than chicken, pork and beef. Groundfish have a similar impact to chicken (the least impactful of the animal products), large pelagics have more impact than chicken but less than pork, and shrimps have more impact than pork but less than beef.

Similarly, for the EU, estimations point to emissions of 4.6 kg CO2 eq. per kg of cod and 9.0 kg CO2 eq. per kg of shrimp for the whole life cycle, with the majority of the emissions generated during the production process (i.e. fishing activity).

However, these studies generally provide a comparable ranking between the different types of products: lower impact for shellfish compared to finfish (due to the absence of feed) and lower impact of most of the finfish compared to meat products (even if some finfish may range at the same level of pork and chicken products in some studies), one of the highest impacts in terms of GHG being for beef meat. As an illustration, the following figure provides a comparison of the emissions for the main types of farming in Ireland; shellfish production emits less than 1 kg of CO2 eq. / kg of product, while salmon and other finfish emit between 3.9 and 4.5 kg of CO2 eq. / kg of product. References for meat products are higher: 7.2 kg of CO2 eq. / kg of product for pig meat, 6.1 kg of CO2 eq. / kg of product for poultry meat and 21 kg of CO2 eq. / kg of product for beef meat.

Based on these emission levels, it is possible to figure out solutions to reduce GHG emissions from aquaculture. The main leverages identified are:
•    increasing energy efficiency in order to reduce the energy use on-site;
•    shifting to renewable energy sources from diesel, which currently accounts for a significant share of the energy used on-site for several types of farming, such as bivalves, marine fish, salmonids and cyprinids;
•    improving the feed conversion ratio (with the evolution of the ratio composition and the animal genetics);
•    improving the interaction with surrounding habitats to enhance blue carbon sequestration (for bivalves and seaweed mariculture) ;
•    implementing polyculture to reduce the GHG releases from bivalve farming and reduce eutrophication around fed finfish farms (with the impact of blue carbon habitats). This could be achieved through: i) co-farming of bivalves and seaweed and ii) co-farming of finfish and seaweed or bivalves.